Love Life: Happily Taken
Dear Dr. Ovlowska,
I have several Polish friends, but lately one of them, a woman, seems like she may want to be more than just friends. However, I have a girlfriend. How can I tell if she’s being more then friendly, and how do I let her down without losing a friend?
Signed,
Happily Taken
Dear Happily Taken,
The New Year is here and with it a chance to redefine ourselves. Who were you last year and who do you want to be in 2010? The choice is yours and the opportunity to express yourself is right there in precisely the sort of little every day dilemmas as the one described in your question.
There are moments when we need to be cruel to be kind. If your friend “seems like she wants more” – chances are you are right.
Yet I’m surprised you call her “friend” if she doesn’t know you have a girlfriend already! Have you been “economical with the truth”? Well, now in the New Year the moment has come to cut clear lines.
Pin an enormous, centrefold, picture poster of your delicious girlfriend on the wall, extol her virtues at any given opportunity and drop her name in every second sentence of your conversation.
If your friend possesses grace and tact, she will quietly withdraw, and your friendship will remain intact.
If, however, she’s a hot-headed, spoilt brat and the boss’s daughter, you have the choice of giving her what she wants or to look around for another job.
Or worse, she IS the boss… at which point you have only one option, and it’s a risky one: give her what she wants, but make such a poor job of it, she’ll never ask for more.
That option could however backfire in more than one way, and ultimately presses the more relevant question of who you really are. And so we are back at your New Year resolution.
Do you stand by your power and make the presence of your girlfriend a clear matter or are you a common people pleaser? In the year of 2010 it’s up to you – are you a man or are you a mouse?
Very best wishes to you from
Dr. Ovlowska